A companion to the Hinton Hunter and the Old Metal Detector blogs, dedicated to the first "true 25mm" figures of the Minifigs S Range, produced between 1968 and 1975.

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

Franco Prussian War

Another smallish range which seems to be quite rare, but again with a lot of charm, and probably the main attempt at providing figures for this conflict until the popular Wargames Foundry range (still called 25mm at time of release).

The figures I have from this range have come from a range of sources, including a colonial collection which included some conversions. It is also difficult sometimes to tell the French figures apart from Crimean range counterparts - for infantry, the tell tale is the equipment on the back, which has a blanket wrapped around the top three sides of the back pack. Cavalry is nmore difficult - I have some Chasseurs d'Afrique, and I am not clear whether these are FPW figures, Crimean Figures, or indeed whether the same figure was used with two differnet codes. Any information on this would be welcome.

4 comments:

I have a wide range of Crimea S range infigures - British, Russian, Turks and French. The French could be part of the Franco Prussian Range? I have a Currassier and a Dragoon who could from this range. Tried to ask Minifigs and they didn't know. Neither type of cav made it to the Crimea.

I will be looking at Crimean range on the blog soon. The only French cavalry listed in it are the Chasseur d'Afrique and Spahi, so they most likely are from the Franco Prussian War range. I have been sent some scans of an old S Range catalogue which has a picture of the Cuirassier - I will add this picture to the blog soon and you will be able to compare it. I have acquired a lot of S range Crimeans while waiting for the old Douglas range to come back into production and I really like they. My avatar is BCR 21s Officer Top Hat and Umbrella.

Steve, I'm sure they are S Range, probably from the AWI range. I do have some figures from it but not I thinbk these. If you have the figures (rather than just a picture!) you could always try removing one from the unit base and seeing if you can identify a code number scratched on the underside of the base. The other thing that sometimes work is to look at any pictures you can find of figures in the current Minifigs 25mm range, as essentially there was a replacement for each of the S range figures. If I get a change I will check my assorted odd figures and see if I can come up with a better identification.

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About this blog...

This site is one of a family of (currently) three blogs for people interested in old 20mm and "true 25mm" wargames figures. The others are the Hinton Hunter (concentrating on Hinton Hunt) and the Old Metal Detector (other manufacturers).

Minifgs S Range figures can be hard to identify with absolute confidence, partly through a lack of contemporary photographic catalogues, partly because the code numbers scratched on the underside of infantry figures' bases may be obscured by later basing or by filing, and because code numbers are not present on cavalry figures, while one Napoleonic Lancer looks very like another.

If you spot any mistakes in the attribution of any of the figures here, or can supply pictures for any of the figures missing them, I would be very glad to hear from you.

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